that they have any knowledge of our affairs below,
have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion,
till I can thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture,
"At the conversion of a sinner, the angels in heaven
rejoice." I cannot, with those in that great father,<49>
securely interpret the work of the first day, fiat lux, to
the creation of angels; though I confess there is not
any creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature
as light in the sun and elements: we style it a bare
accident; but, where it subsists alone, 'tis a spiritual
substance, and may be an angel: in brief, conceive light
invisible, and that is a spirit.

Sect. 34.--These are certainly the magisterial and
masterpieces of the Creator; the flower, or, as we may
say, the best part of nothing; actually existing, what
we are but in hopes, and probability. We are only that
amphibious piece, between a corporeal and a spiritual
essence; that middle form, that links those two to-
gether, and makes good the method of God and nature,
that jumps not from extremes, but unites the incom-
patible distances by some middle and participating
natures. That we are the breath and similitude of God,
it is indisputable, and upon record of Holy Scripture:
but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I
thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetorick, till my
near judgment and second thoughts told me there was
a real truth therein. For, first we are a rude mass, and
in the rank of creatures which only are, and have a dull
kind of being, not yet privileged with life, or preferred